Published by the AAUGH Blogger

Enjoying a creative work and being respectful to the talented folks who created it are two different things, and that conflict shows up a lot these days. It shows up in all forms of intellectual property abuse… which in this Internet age most obviously includes piracy of music and movies and such, but also includes things like this: a theatre group performing A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown at a church. Did they have permission to do this commercial event? Given that Peanuts.com specifically points out that theatrical rights are not available for A Charlie Brown Christmas, I’d have to say no, that they were merely exploiting the copyrights and trademarks to their own benefit. Did they do it respectfully? Seeing that they chose to rewrite Easter Beagle to include whatever they felt the message of Easter was, rather than the version of Easter Beagle that Schulz and his collaborators created, that looks like a “no” as well. The people putting on this performance may consider themselves fans of Peanuts, but they are not friends of Peanuts.

This is on my mind because this weekend there’s a big movie coming out (in North America; it’s already a blockbuster in much of the rest of the world.) It’s got a great cast, and is directed by Joss Whedon, whose work I have a real weakness for (well, except Dollhouse.) And it’s got characters created by the American comic book field’s closest equivalent to what Schulz was in the strips: Jack Kirby. He co-created the Avengers. Admittedly, the Avengers is mainly a big team of characters who had existed previously… but Kirby had co-created Captain America, and Iron Man, and the comics version of Thor, and the Hulk. So, does Jack get a nice big credit somewhere on the work? No, he gets a teeny tiny credit somewhere in the end. Does the film at all benefit the family he cared for? No, the Kirby’s are not slated to see a penny from this, any more than they’ve seen a cent from all the films made off of the characters he created – not the ones listed above, nor the Fantastic Four, nor the X-Men.

Do I want to see The Avengers? Yes. I’ll confess to that, although I certainly understand those who are choosing to boycott the movie. But I will show my respect for Kirby as well, by throwing a buck for each film ticket I buy toward the Jack Kirby Museum, there to maintain awareness of his work. I encourage other people to do this as well. You can learn more about it at ABuckForJack.com.

Added later: I am seeing comments suggesting that the Kirby credit on the movie may not be as small as was at first suggested; I have not verified for myself.

Coming up this Saturday is one of the greatest holidays on the calendar – Free Comic Book Day! Just think about those words; is there any one of them not to like?

And to make it all the better, this time there’s a free Peanuts comic book to be had! Now, it’s not new material (it reprints material from last year’s Peanuts issue 0) and Peanuts isn’t the full content (it’s a flip book, with the other side offering up Adventure Time comics. But it’s just one of many comics that will be available at most comic shops throughout the English-speaking world.

Some shops will let you have just one free comic, others will lade you down with a number of free titles. In any case – it’s free comics, so how can you go wrong?

Find the address of a participating comic shop near you and check out the full range of special Free Comic Book Day comics available this year (not all titles at all shops) at the Free Comic Book Day website.

I stumbled across this Mo Willems doodles of his Gerald & Piggie characters as Charlie Brown and Lucy. We here at the AAUGH Blog are big fans of Willems’s serieses of Pigeon (the first one may be the finest comic book yet this century), Elephant & Piggie, and Knuffle Bunny… although some of his other books, we are notably less fond of.

For those of you who want the rarer covers of the current run of Peanuts comic books, they’re now available for $9.99 apiece directly from the publisher. The first one is sold out.

For those headed to this year’s Beaglefest: I am scheduled to talk on Saturday morning, so if you want to avoid me, that’s the day to avoid.

At the moment, you can preorder The Art And Making of Peanuts Animation for $20.83, which is a pretty steep discount for a $40 book… and remember that if the price goes down at any time between now and when the book ships this fall, you’ll get that lower price. I suggest that you lock in that savings now!

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AAUGH.com is funded by a combination of referral links, primarily to Amazon.com (which means that when you click through on a link from here and then buy something, the AAUGH Blogger gets paid a cut) and by advertising, most of which we do not control. The AAUGH Blogger strives for fair reviews, occasionally gets review copies (and has never sold them), and tends to talk about himself in the third person, yes he does.
The AAUGH Blogger has or has had business relationships with the following publishers of Peanuts books:

Boom! Studios (Kaboom), in regard to the Peanuts comic books and the trade paperback collections thereof

IDW, in matters unrelated to their Peanuts books

Packager becker&mayer!, in regards to such works as The Peanuts Collection, published by Little Brown and other publishers, Classic Peanuts: Great Moments, published by Sterling Innovation, and The Snoopy Treasures, published by Thunder Bay Press
The AAUGH Blogger is the publisher of About Comics, and as part of that line publishes various Schulz-related books.